More Sickness.

Update: People recently have been asking me about the seven strong acids and I must repeatedly tell them I have no idea beyond 4.
Here: HCl, HBr, HI, H₂SO₄, HNO₃, HClO₃, HClO₄
Don't ask again. I already forgot.

Still sick? You bet, although I can feel it getting better. DST is a weird thing. I woke up this morning at "6:30AM" and told myself I should sleep until 9AM which was hard so I just toobed around in bed for 30 minutes.

Another thing, the tutoring service appointment servers are down. You know, for such a crappy system, you'd think that it would work all the time, or at least have 99.999% uptime (Carrier class servers...).

I think during orientation, they said they had two backup servers. I suppose they're down as well. You know, it's not that hard to manage 50-70 tutors and at most 500-700 tutees. In fact, the center makes at least a dollar for almost every tutoring appointment..., so they need to *cough cough* fire someone and hire a programmer, pay him 10-12k and design a better system.

Ridiculous! Apparently I hadn't been noticing it, but the regular emails about our appointments the next day stopped about...4 days ago. I didn't even realize I had a Saturday or Sunday morning sessions until I checked online (which.. is probably going to stop working soon).

There's this big problem with Jester, in that it's always damn uncomfortable. Always always always cold. I have to ball myself up in a fetal position to keep warm, jeez.

Sickness and Regret

Those are two worst things a man can experience, with regret being several orders of magnitude worse. So what's happening today? Both. I'm sick. I woke up this morning with the most horrible of sore throats, almost like the maelstrom in my head creeped down some. I woke up and just sat there, cycling through periods of alertness and stupor.

When this cycle finally broke, it was 9:15 and I was 15 minutes late to TKD. I showed up in TKD extremely under dressed and requested to sit out, only to 'summarize' my observations of the class. It was calming, but my throat still hurt.

After that, I had a physics tutoring session, which took me about 15 minutes, since he only had 8 questions and pretty much knew the subject material. I played piano for a bit, with some commie Chinese girl breathing over my shoulder and repeatedly asking me to play Pathetique. "Lunch" consisted of a pretentious yogurt drink and medium-size bottle of orange juice*.

I pretty much half-dozed through an MRI lecture, something I made up for during Drop-In Tutoring, since no one showed up (test just passed recently or something?). 3PM.

After scanning some images and getting more and more depressed that I hadn't done any significant work this weekend, nor did I get much done Monday (beginnings of the sickness), I went to tutor for another 3 hours again.

My precal tutee was, in one word, awesome. It's so pleasing to teach someone who wants to learn, learns, and applies it well. Not only did she apply it well, she also was happy that she understood, which often translates into wanting to know more (where I tangent off into theory and sometimes physics - with everyone....). I'm only saying this because my next tutee was, let's say... far from perfect.

Arriving 20 minutes late (I could have left at 15...), she showed little interest in learning, with her rhetoric peppered with pagan language. I'd ask a question and she'd respond with "How the hell should I know?". Also, I tend to get very irritated when people try to eat during my session. Once, a tutee asked me if it was ok to take a bite or two and yes, that's perfectly fine. As a person that seldom eats (i.e. always hungry), I can absolutely understand. This girl chomped on her Skittles and talked at the same time. The second thing that absolutely irritated me was her (very) obvious lack of respect for the subject. She treated it like I would treat a business course. It's organic chemistry, the bane of most premeds, the least you could do is bow down before its awesomeness if you can't conquer it. Don't hate on it like some idiot.

I was angry and felt like crying, namely because it was the first time I've come across a tutee that 1) didn't care about the subject, 2) made my tutoring session extremely difficult and 3) disrespected me. The last point is not as important, but at least don't denounce my carefully crafted examples as 'shit'.

I went to ECE labs after this and felt the rain of regret get heavier and heavier, until Kevin came over and we had dinner at Subway. So this post begs the question- Why have I (relatively) detailed my day? After dinner, we quickly put together a restoration plan with the following priorities:

1) Resume normal or near-normal levels of productivity, and
2) Force into remission this illness by holistic measures until proper drugs can be administered.

What do these tactics consist of**?

1) Water balance - abnormally high intake of water for flushing effect.
2) Chloraseptic - every 2-3 hours, below normal dose, keep throat numb until the pain subsides.
3) Adequate food intake - this will be hard.
4) C - Orange juice until the ailment disappears.

It's 2:05am, I have 5/6th of my Classical homework done, radbio lectures caught up and ready to sleep (and meet a professor tomorrow --> beginning of some other conscious tactics, well planned out by Academics).

*: Subconscious beginning of restoration tactics.
**: Effective after dinner.

God complex

Time and again, people have accused me of having a sort of God Complex. So I decided to take their qualms seriously and did some research. Based on the facts (and opinions) I have found about this, I will make a list, and determine applicability on a range of 1-10.

• A psychological state in which the individual believes him/herself to be, or is destined to become, the savior of the world (actually this is the Messianic Complex). (6 out of 10)
• A person said to act so arrogantly that he might as well believe he is a god. (1 out of 10)
  
• A person said to act as if they were appointed to act by a god. (4 out of 10)
• Narcissism. (2 out of 10)

I'm willing to bet the Brahmin upbringing has probably amplified this effect much more (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Transwiki:Debadutta). I haven't found an effective way to weight these (paltry list of) considerations, so I'll just take an average, 3.25.

It's not that bad right? Although this statement tends to bug me:

Richter argues that the arrested development of such compulsions leads to denial of suffering, self-doubt and an expectation of servility for women or minorities.

Denial of suffering? No. Lyfe Sux.
Self doubt? Yes
Expectation of servility for women? I hope not.
Expectation of servility for minorities? [No comment, although I'm a minority myself. Since the question is not specific, I am unable to answer.]

Comments?

Maelstrom.

Once again..

Good vs Evil
Reason vs Emotion
Work vs Play
Life vs Like

Profile? Profile.

I was thinking, since I just upgraded to the new (google-email) based blogger, now would be a good time to update my profile as well. Then I realized that few people read it and the ones that do, I don't really want them to read it. So the profile stands. I added a little bit though.

Today has been one of those very horrible days. If you recall, the last horrible day had a 3 hour productivity 'blackout' session where I was hunting for a Tae-Kwon-Do uniform in the hot texas sun.

I woke up at noon today, having slept around 9 hours. Actually, scratch that. I really woke up at ~7am when two alarm clocks went off, so I could get ready for tutoring at 8am. Well, I got an email that she can't make it and I thought it would be totally awesome to sleep and get paid for it, so in a bout of stupor, I did. Note how stupor sounds like stupid.

I pranced around in my fairy-land until noon, periodically waking up, looking at my alarm clock, telling myself "Oh that thing doesn't say 11am, you're just hallucinating! LCD's say different things from different angles!" and then going back to sleep. In a way, waking up late on the weekend is a little hypocritical in my mind; why should the weekend be any different than other days?

The other day, someone was giving a presentation in Japanese and they presented Wierd Al Yankovic's "White and Nerdy" music video. There was this part in the music video where a bunch of pagans are dancing in front of an equation, one that I readily identified as Schrodinger's equation. Is it just me, or does that have some meaning behind it?

I bet it's a really awesome meaning.

Taken from dictionary.com

Nerd:

1.	a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person.

2.	an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit: a computer nerd.

Geek:

1.	a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken.

2.	a peculiar or offensive person, esp. one who is perceived to be overly intellectual.

3.	an expert in computers (a term of pride as self-reference, but often considered offensive when used by outsiders.)

Dork:

1. a stupid or ridiculous person; jerk; nerd.

Although the biting of the heads thing is hilarious, please pick wisely.

How to enter the dance floor!

Update: Due to recent events, the threat alert level has changed. Standby for any further information

How to enter the dance floor- some objective ideas:

Strange thing, this 'floor' is. Something that takes up less than 20% of the space in most clubs is the sole purpose of most people entering. Of course, there are those pagans that go for 'drink specials', something I still haven't been able to figure out (pay money to save money? fishy...). Let's cut to the chase. The problem that remains (and will remain) is that of bystanders, people on the outside of the floor, inching to get in yet for whatever reason, fail to enter and say "Oh I should have acted on my impulses" (roughly trans. "I shouda bust up in thurr", "GITRDON", "ngoQ ngech"). The last one was a Klingon translation. Of all the things people should understand, you should know that lack of action is impulsive since most people are pussies and pussy impulses are overwhelming. There is no impulse to get you inside! Only protocol. Only calculated protocol.

So how does one enter the floor? First of all, you must want to enter. You must be displaying the proper signals- what they are, I have no idea. The easiest way is to get dragged in by someone else. Hard to visualize? Think of the floor as one big cellular nucleus. You (by displaying a signal- aka signal patch or signal peptide) can be attached to a nuclear import receptor (a girl, usually) and fly right in to tango. How to get out? Similar process. You can leave by yourself, but that's awkward and you're messing up the ratio, so thanks for violating thermodynamics. Leave with an export receptor (same girl, usually). So far, I have only found one way to mechanically insert yourself into the floor and that's by doing the robot. People freak out and move out of the way, because hell, you can't see what's going on, you're a ROBOT, which means you can't move your eyes from side to side- something even the layman knows (wow!). I'm seriously never using this tactic again, but it's an interesting experience. Try not to bump into people while doing it, otherwise you might trip and fall. If you do fall, make it smooth and act like a robot on the floor. You can flail your arms around and say ERROR ERROR and make it even worse. Just, whatever you do, don't just walk up into there (or dance up into it or whatever), because 1) You're a moron if you can't find a girl to ask because even Robot Ma (detailed below), who is probably a nub freshman could ask and 2) thanks for messing up the ratio again.

//

Remember the guy that hit on me the other day? Yeah he got arrested. I totally regret missing that scene.

Also, I think I'm going to try some hash-brownies in my senior year on some random weekend. The plan is, to keep it completely scientific. That is, a minute (or every 5 minutes)-by-minute account of what I'm doing and what I feel. Totally awesome. That way, when people wonder what it feels like, I'll just send them my log. Whoa!

Amazing what 10 minutes can do.

It was raining and I felt like riding the bus today, when, in all my years of searching, I randomly got to (2nd-hand) experience the beginnings of a human mating cycle.

I got on the bus as did someone else, a young black fellow with a large diamond earring in his right ear (for description's sake). The bus puttered along; it was raining and many people decided to take the bus. All of a sudden "DAWG That's some fayine rock ya got thurr. You aer kinda hawt, comma here lemme talk to ya" from a young black girl in a seat. The guy trudged his way over and they started making small talk, but small talk was hardly private when the bus was this packed (and a little noisy), so half the bus got to key into the conversation. It started with casual jabs back and forth about his clothing, what he does, what's in the "laptop bag". (What IS in the laptop bag anyway?) Finally, what's going on this weekend. Invitations were made, parties announced and a hookup complete. The young male specimen then seated himself down once people had cleared with a large grin (easily visible to the female) and the sparkle from his teeth only overcome from that of his earring.

So that was just a description, no labels, just what I saw. Commentary? First, The protocol of mating utilized here is 1) exceedingly blunt and 2) coming from the wrong gender. In fact, the words "You are kind of hot", I would probably never utter unless heavily inebriated or under the influence of psychosis-inducing drugs. Secondly, earrings look nice on girls, only. Even then, only a select few are acceptable. Hoop earrings? No. Let me digress and give you a link to one. Third, the next appropriate encounter for me would be either a school event or a dinner or coffee or lunch or _____ (fill in with calm peaceful food engagement) and not some place to get 'krunk'.


My preferred method would have very little small talk in the beginning, as I'd probably try to solicit her opinion on various things and hopefully, she can voice some on scientific issues- Which.. I highly doubt any general 'true' opinions exist; this quick barrage would be meant to probe other things.

Apart from verbal communication, non-verbal is probably more important. People that exhibit jerky (includes the feminine 'bubbly') demeanor are very difficult to be around for long periods of time. It's soothing to be around someone calm, yet they probably shouldn't be calm all the time. I can name examples of both- constantly jerky and constantly calm.

I was supposed to leave FAC at 8pm. It's now 8:04pm. [Work + Schedule] is more important than this blog. I apologize. Anticipate a post tomorrow.

As promised

Before I continue on what happened, I just want to say two things:

1) I've upgraded to the new Blogger, so no more crashes and things should run more smoothly.

2) Yesterday I was hit on by a guy.

To make a long story short, I was playing the piano and this guy interrupts me constantly to ask me hippie questions like "Why do you play music?", undoubtedly so he could expand on my answer, which was "I don't know..", an answer strategically chosen to limit any hippie expansion he could have done.

Then he said he loved me and that's not just because of my muscular hands playing the piano. I'm going to keep away and I'm currently on Orange Alert. (see threat alert bar to left)

始めよう!

Let's start with the robot. Actually, there were two robots, me being one of them. If you haven't seen my impersonation of the robot dance, it is priceless. I veered my way over 3/4 way of the dance floor doing the robot and illicting multiple laughs before I started feeling too weird and/or felt like someone would trip me.

Oh well. Most people would be too shy to try this anyway. The second robot was found not by me, but a friend who was forced to dance with him. Robot, as in he didn't know any moves besides the basic salsa step. Yes. Joy was forced to dance with him for quite some time and I laughed from a distance. He looked like Yao Ma, too; a fitting analogy, since Yao's a nub as well.

Hippie Rickshaw:

The two were tired, which in my opinion, is weak. Walking isn't that painful. Anyway, a bunch of hippies were lined up with their human powered rickshaws, so we decided to get one. FIRST, I asked for the price, like any good Asian would. Apparently, they work off tips. TIPS. That means people like Jonny would give them spare change and still be content inside. Hop on one of these things and the hippie started pedaling like crazy (in some high gear) and 6 minutes later, were were done. I gave him $7. Perhaps a little high, but I was feeling sorry for him. I tend to feel sorry for hippies these days.

I will delay the analogy to nuclear import signals to tomorrow.

Physics major goes clubbing - Part 1

A couple of days ago, me and two others decided to go to Bonggos, to 'salsa'. I'm not actually going to list events in chronological order, rather, I'll comment on a couple of things each day for the next couple of days.

Let's start with the most recent.

After I got back, I went to sleep at around 2:40AM and about an hour later, there was shouting in the hallway, and I could hear the remnants of an alarm's echo. I ignored it and slept another 20 minutes. The shouting persisted, as well as the alarm. This time, I was pissed. I put on my mad-face and walked outside my room in my pajamas holding my flashlight at it's head, with intention to destroy some skulls.

There was a fire drill, at 3:30AM. Everyone was like GO GO GO, so I left to go outside, where it was sufficiently cold in my thin pajamas. I walked around looking for people to amuse me, but alas, it was only the first couple of floors. I should make a habit of sleeping in Patterson over the weekend.

Interesting? Hell no. I have better things to do. Needless to say, last weekend was immensely unproductive, and I'm still suffering because of it. Also, some other things changed, namely, I'm a little infected with a virus, but that should pass.

I'm glad I made a list that night of things that happened (which I will be commenting on), so for the next couple of days, I won't forget what to write about, although I may neglect to write from time to time.

Let's start with the random guy who made a pagan request in the club. I was on the 2nd floor showing Joy how to move and some guy comes up to me and he says:

Pagan: Hey man! You gots some moves, DAWG.
Me: Hey. Um. Thanks.
Pagan: Do you have an extra CONDOM?

It's a good thing my hearing was still good, since asking him to repeat what he said would be embarrasing on my part (and also a little weak). First of all. Extra? These pagans amuse me.

I quickly shook my head and recalled about two hours ago, when Tang was offering me one. Pagans indeed.

Next time -
Robot
Hippie Rickshaw
and.. How to enter the dance floor! (with a fair analogy made to Nuclear Import Signals)

ROCKSTAR

I saw the new Southpark episode yesterday and that tipped me over, convincing me to try this new energy drink called ROCKSTAR. If you watch it carefully, large Cartman is drinking one of these while rock music is playing in the background.

This drink has one of the most bitter tastes to it, but I have an inclination to believe it works. The resulting sugar-high completely numbed my senses, including shyness and I had multiple squall moments this morning. It's like that one character in Naruto that fights better when he's drunk. Damn it, I just made a reference to Naruto.

I think, it also made my voice a little deeper, which sounds weird since I don't have a excessively muscular build and many things amuse me, so I laugh frequently. I will note, for those of you that don't see me on a day-to-day basis, I have a better muscular build than probably 70-80% of people in my weight range.

So the question remains- Did I feel like a ROCKSTAR? Head-banging and guitar-jamming? Probably not. This brings me to another point. Many many people laugh and criticize the council-member thing, but what they fail to realize is their greatest weakness is probably one of my better strengths. Too many people engage in impulsive, regrettable decision making, and then turn around and make fun of the 8-hour shifts the council takes.

I believe one of my greatest strengths is objective decision making- I rarely ever make an impulsive decision, fueled by weakness and susceptibility to temptation. Probably Oma's Kitchen (or Korean food in general) and girls with puffy cheeks are my greatest weaknesses.

Fortunately, I don't eat that much and not too many girls exist with just puffy cheeks (as opposed to having poofy cheek and a poofy body).

Ok. Time to die in Classical.

Sorry.

Classical is killing me.